Steve Norris of Climax Nottingham
Interview - producer Steve Norris tells us about the final days of Magic & Mayhem : Art of Magic's troubled development
Last November the first playable code for Magic & Mayhem : The Art of Magic appeared on our doormat. Although there were obviously still a lot of rough edges to be smoothed out the game was already looking promising and a spring release was on the cards. Then everything went ominously quiet...
Round In Circles
At the end of April word emerged that developers Charybdis had closed down, and Virgin were looking for another company to finish the Art of Magic. This was leading to another delay for the already overdue game though, and in the meantime most of the development team had been snapped up by their neighbours at Climax's Nottingham studio. It was perhaps no surprise then when Virgin revealed several weeks later that development of the game had been switched to .. Climax Nottingham. Bizarrely the game would be finished by the original team, now working for a different company a couple of miles down the road from their old offices. "Most of the original team have been working on the game [at Climax]", producer Steve Norris told us. "The move from Charybdis to Climax has actually been beneficial for the game; the move gave the team the opportunity to take a breath, step back, and then finish the game with a fresh perspective." The game was nearing completion when the team were given their unexpected break, and the work that has been done since then was mostly testing, fixing and completing the features already laid out at Charybdis. "All the remaining spells have been implemented and refined and the campaign has been fully scripted". In addition the studio's Managing Director Paul Carruthers revealed that "a few little 'extras' that the publisher wanted" have been added.
Feature Creep
Otherwise the game's design has remained largely unchanged despite the move. "The original Magic & Mayhem had a well balanced spell system that produced great gameplay", according to Steve, and "the target from the outset was not to ruin this mechanic with Magic & Mayhem 2." Unfortunately for Charybdis, this philosophy led to perfectionism and constant tinkering, extending and rewriting of sections of the game. "Feature creep was the main reason for the delay", Steve admitted. "Everyone in the team wanted the best for the sequel, and this inherently meant that if something did not work as we liked, it was improved or re-implemented. In the long run the game should reap the rewards, hopefully!" Charybdis was just one of many gaming-related companies suffering during the first half of the year though. Publishers cut back, developers laid off droves of staff, and websites and magazines were dropping like flies. "Every company has its own set of individual problems, and the dips that this industry seems to experience during periods of hardware changeover will unfortunately magnify these", Steve explained. "There's certainly a heightened feeling of optimism around at the moment though and this can only do the industry good. I would say that companies should learn lessons from these closures and structure themselves to minimise future damage."
Conclusion
After months of delays and a change of developer, the Art of Magic is now due for release early in November. The game's development cycle has certainly been an eventful one, and Steve told us that "in hindsight, of course we would have done things differently - it's a game after all". But despite its troubled background, the latest beta code we have received shows that it still has a lot of promise, even if the future of the series remains uncertain. "At this stage we have no plans for further iterations of the game or mission packs, and as the game ramps down the team is moving to work on Warhammer Online and other secret projects that we're working on."
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